There is an ever increasing demand in environment friendly energy sources. One area of great development is solar power. Solar power in a solar power station can be harvested without the need for any fuel to operate and provides a very low carbon dioxide footprint. Moreover, when the solar power station is installed in a location where cloud coverage is low, the solar power output can be reliable and predictable.
However, solar panels, e.g. of photovoltaic solar power stations, are subject to failures, due to e.g. weather or component failures.
In an article named “UAVs to Inspect Solar Farms”, Tom Lombardo, 4 May 2014, Engineering.com Electronics, available at http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/7544/UAVs-to-Inspect-Solar-Farms.aspx at the time of filing this application, it is disclosed that a UAV has been developed that is used for remote monitoring and inspection of construction sites, mining operations, and farms. This UAV is now being used in the solar array inspection business and will be tested on photovoltaic farms using an infrared thermal imaging camera. However, capturing such data of sufficient quality requires skill and experience of an operator flying the UAV.
US 2010/0215212 A1 discloses a system and method utilizing an unmanned air vehicle to inspect structures. An unmanned air vehicle capable of moving to a position and hovering in place is positioned using GPS coordinates. The unmanned air vehicle is able to capture images of the structure and transmit the images to an inspector and a database. Data identifying the position of the unmanned air vehicle and the orientation of the digital camera can be stored in the database, permitting specific inspections of specific structural elements to be repeated with a high degree of precision and accuracy later in time.